USA > Virginia > Tazewell County > Tazewell County > History of Tazewell county and southwest Virginia, 1748-1920 > Part 26
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return back, viz Mr. Dandridge, Taylor, Holloway & Waggoner." The remainder of the company, then thirty-three in number, traveled on down the Ohio for several days until they arrived at a point opposite the mouth of the Sciota River. This was on Saturday, the 30th of April, and as to what was done on May 1st, the following day, Hanson relates: "It being Sunday we took our rest, and looked at an old Fort we found about 4 or 500 hundred yards from the Banks of the River. It is a square Figure, each side 300 Paces long. It has 4 gates and Sally Ports, and it is so antient, that the Indians cannot tell when it was built, or by whome. There has been an Indian Town there formerly & there is some remains of it to this Day."
Thwaites undertakes to account for this strange ruin, which Hanson calls a Fort, by saying that George Croghan, a Pennsylvania trader, had, some twenty years previously, built a stone trading house in the locality where Floyd's party saw the ruin. Hanson's description of its dimensions must be greatly exaggregated, or Thwaites' theory of its origin is unreasonable.
On the 2nd day of May, Floyd and his companion surveyors began their surveying in Kentucky. The first survey they made was a boundary of four or five hundred acres in the name of Patrick Henry, which included the old Fort and the abandoned Indian town. It was the town from which Mrs. Mary Ingles made her escape from the Indians in 1755. Floyd and his company then went actively to work, making surveys of the best lands in different locali- ties, and continued this work until Daniel Boone and Michael Stoner, messengers sent out by Captain Russell, reached and informed them that the Indians had commenced hostilities. Thereupon, Floyd, and the men who were with him, started on a hasty march to the Clinch Valley settlements, while Boone and Stoner went on to give warn- ing to Taylor and others who had separated from Floyd's survey- ing party.
The Floyd surveying expedition was an incident that very greatly affected the welfare of the inhabitants of the Clinch Valley; and for that reason I have given it extended notice. It was one of the certain contributing causes that provoked the Indians to com- mence hostile attacks in 1774 upon the settlers in the Alleghany regions-all the way from Pennsylvania to the Cumberland Moun- tains-and it involved the Tazewell pioneers in a frightful struggle with the Shawnees, that did not terminate until several years after the Revolutionary War was concluded.
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In the spring of 1774 the Virginians were engaged in two very bitter quarrels, one with the Pennsylvanians over the boundary line between the two provinees, and the other with the Indians in Ohio over the territory south of the Ohio River. The Virginians were determined to take actual possession of the uninhabited lands in Kentucky and in the present West Virginia for establishing settle- ments, claiming to have acquired the right to do this under the treaty made with the Iroquois Indians. On the other hand, the Pennsyl- vanians did not wish to disturb the Indians in the possession of the disputed territory. The Pennsylvania traders had for a number of years held control of the trade with the Indians in the Ohio Valley, and had realized heavy profits therefrom; and they openly encour- aged the red men to resist further eneroachments upon their hunting grounds by the white men, no matter whether they were from Vir- ginia or Pennsylvania.
John Floyd, wrote a letter to Colonel William Preston, dated, "Little Giandot, 26th April 1774," in which he related the follow- ing: "Last night Thos. Glen, Lawrence Ordered & William Nash came to our camp who were ordered off the River by a Party of Indians who only saw them aeross the River. The Shawnees took Darnell & 6 Others prisoners a few weeks ago & held a Council Over them three Days; after which they took everything they had & sent them off: telling them at the same time it was the directions from the Superintendent Geo. Crohon (Croghan) to kill all the Virginians they could find on the River & rob & whip the Penn- sylvanians. This they told them in English."
The Virginians were greatly angered by the conduct of such scoundrels as Croghan; and accused the Pennsylvania traders of not only ineiting the Indians to commit brutal outrages upon the whites, but charged them with supplying the savages with guns and ammuni- tion to be used in their plundering and murderous forays against the border settlements. But the best element of the backwoodsmen, including the Clinch Valley pioneers, were reluctant to engage in war with the Indians, knowing that a very large percentage of the much-wronged natives were still friendly to the whites and wanted to preserve peaceful relations with them. Availing themselves of several aets of violence and thievery perpetrated by a few of the vicious red men, certain brutal and disorderly white men began to murder, without provocation, innocent men and women of the red race.
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A few days after John Floyd made his voyage down the Ohio River from the mouth of the Kanawha, two cruel butcheries of friendly Indians occurred in the Upper Ohio Valley. These acts were so inhuman that even the friendly Indians became frenzied, and war was ushered in. As previously stated, there was an acri- monious controversy going on between the Virginians and the Penn- sylvanians over the boundry line. Virginia was claiming title to the country about Pittsburg and the entire Susquehana Valley; and a large number of the Pennsylvania mountaineers werc supporting the claims of the Virginia Government. Lord Dunmore, then governor, appointed Dr. John Connolly, a native of Lancaster County, Penn- sylvania, to act as agent for Virginia in the boundary dispute. Connolly was a ficry-tempered and rash man; and was not unwilling to bring about strife between the men of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and precipitate war with the Ohio Indians. On April 15th, 1774, three traders in the employ of a man named Butler were traveling in a canoe about fifty miles below Pittsburg when they were attacked and robbed by a band of outlaw Cherokees. John Floyd in his letter to Colonel Preston, written at "Little Giandot" on the 26th of April, thus refers to the incident: "The whites & Indians the 15th Instant had a skirmish at the mouth of Beaver Creek 45 miles below Pitts- burg. One white man killed, another wounded & One other yet missing the Wounded man got into Fort Pitt where Dr. Wood Dressed his Wounds. this I have from the second hand & I think may be depended on."
Immediately following this act of violence, Connolly issued an open letter to the white men on the frontier, ordering them to make strong resistance to all attacks made by the Indians, and informing the backwoodsmen that the Shawnees had become hostile. This circular letter was construed by the more desperate white men on the border to be an invitation to make attacks upon the Indians. In fact the letter was interpreted by the white settlers to be a declara- tion of war against the Shawnees and their allies of the other Ohio tribes; and Roosevelt says: "As soon as they received Connolly's letter they proceeded to declare war in the regular Indian style, calling a council, planting the war-post, and going through other savage ceremonies, and eagerly waited for a chance to attack their foes."
Captain Michael Cresap was then near Wheeling with a company of hunters and scouts, and with them engaged in the savage cere- monies described by Roosevelt. Butler, the trader, whose men had
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been robbed and killed by the Cherokees, sent two friendly Shawnees in a canoe to the mouth of Beaver Creek to try to recover some of the furs of which he had been robbed by the Cherokees. These two friendly Shawnees were ambushed, and killed, and scalped, by Captain Cresap and his men, on the 27th, of April, near Captina. The better class of the frontiersmen made earnest protest against the outrageous act, but Cresap and his brutal band were proud of their crime. The next day Cresap and his followers made an attack upon a party of Shawnees who were returning from a trading expedition to Pittsburg, and killed one and wounded two of the Indians. One of Cresap's men was also wounded. Among the men who were with Cresap when these ontrages were committed was George Rodgers Clark, then twenty-one years old, and who a few years later became famous as an explorer and leader of the military expeditions that won the great Northwestern territory for Virginia.
Cresap's dastardly acts were followed in a few days by the com- mission of a crime against friendly Indians that was more revolting than anything that had previously occurred on the border. It hap- pened on the 30th of April, three days after the killing of the Shaw- nees by Cresap; and among the victims were a brother and sister of Logan, the great Mingo chief, who had been a staunch friend of the whites. The scene of the massacre was near the mouth of Yel- low Creek, on the east side of the Ohio River, and at the house of a man named Baker. Lord Dunmore, in his report to the Earl of Dart- mouth, secretary of state for the colonies, made on the 24th of De- cember, 1774, gave the following account of the deplorable incident :
"A party of Indians, with their women, happening to encamp on the side of the Ohio opposite to the house of one Baker, who, together with a man of the name of Gratehouse, called to, and invited the Indians to come over and drink with them ; two men and as many women came accordingly, and were, at first, well received, but Baker and Gratehouse, who by this time had collected other People, con- trived to entoxicate the Indians, and they then Murdered them. Soon after two more came over from the Indian Party in search of their Companions, and these met with the same fate. The remainder of the Indian Party growing uneasy at not seeing their friends return, five of them got into a Canoe to go over to the house, but they were soon fired upon by Baker and Gratehouse, and two of the Indians killed and the other three wounded."
Previous to the killing of Logan's sister and brother, a council of the Indians had been held, at which many of the warriors urged
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that all the Ohio tribes should unite and resist the continued aggres- sions and intrusions of the "Long Knives," this name then being applied to the Virginians. Logan was present and took a conspic- uous part in the council, and urgently insisted that peace should be maintained with the whites. He conceded that his people had been outrageously wronged by the pale faces, but he told the Indians they had also been guilty of many outrages upon their white foes. And he also asserted that the red men could accomplish nothing more than harrass and distress the border settlers; and, that, resenting such acts, the Virginians would come in great numbers and drive the Indians from Ohio. He was an orator, his oratory prevailed, and the hatchet for the time being was buried; but the Yellow Creek massacre turned Logan into a veritable fiend. When he was informed of the foul murder of his brother and sister, he raised his hatchet aloft and made a vow that he would not cease to wield it until he had taken ten white scalps for each one that had been torn from the heads of his kindred. Logan's sister was the Indian wife of Colonel John Gibson, who was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and who had participated in the previous Indian wars. At the commencement of Pontiac's War Gibson was captured, but was saved from being burned at the stake by adoption by a squaw. He was released from captivity by Boquet's expedition in 1764, but con- tinued to have intimate relations with the Indians, even taking Logan's sister for a wife. After Dunmore's War, he espoused the Revolutionary cause and commanded the 13th Virginia regiment; and after the Revolution was ended he held several important civil offices in his State and in the Nation. His Indian wife had an infant child with her when she was murdered by Baker and Greathouse; and the child was sent to Pennsylvania, where its father was then residing as an Indian trader. What became of the child, history does not relate.
Immediately after the Yellow Creek tragedy the Mingos sent runners to the Shawnees, the Delawares, and other tribes, to inform them of the outrages perpetrated by Cresap and Greathouse; and urging a war of vengeance against the whites. Logan gathered a band of Mingos together and began to make bloody incursions into the settlements. His first scalping expedition was made into Penn- sylvania and the Panhandle section of Virginia, now West Virginia ; and he took thirteen scalps, six of which were taken from the heads of little children. He and his band were pursued by Captain Francis McClure with a company of Virginia militia. McClure was
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ambushed by the Indians, who killed and scalped him, and shot Lieutenant Samuel Kinkhead through the arm.
While the horrible calamities were happening along and on the Ohio River the inhabitants of the Clinch, Holston and Upper New River valleys were diligently occupied with preparation for the troubles they apprehended would soon come upon them. Colonel William Preston, as county lieutenant, had command of all the mili- tary organizations of Fincastle County; and Major Arthur Camp- bell, as a subordinate of Colonel Preston, was in charge of all the militia and other military organizations on the west side of New River. Preston was then living at Smithfield, his home, just west of Blacksburg; and Campbell was living at Royal Oak, just east of the present Marion, Virginia. Both of these men were eminently fitted for the positions they were called upon to fill, and had acquired much experience with the habits and methods of the Indians in war and in peace. This was fully proven by the successful manner in which they dicharged their duties in the war that was then imminent with the Indians. They had to organize the inhabitants of Fincastle County into military bodies, and establish a line of defence reaching from New River, on through the Clinch and Powell's valleys, to Cumberland Gap, on the northwest side of the county; and from Cumberland Gap to the present North Carolina line on the south- west border. Fortunately the men who were to perform military service, as volunteers or drafted men, were all of the pioneer type, trained hunters and woodsmen, brave and strong, and ready to do or die for the protection of their homes and families. Of these splendid men none were braver or more efficient than the Tazewell pioneers.
The Ohio Indians, chiefly the Shawnees, made urgent appeals to the Cherokees in North Carolina and Georgia to unite with them in a vigorous war against the whites; and it required very skillful management on the part of Major Campbell of the Holston, and leading men of the Watauga settlements to prevent the Cherokees from entering the war. As it was, a few of the first outrages com- mitted were by mixed bands of Shawnees and Cherokees, the most notable being the murder of the three young men, Boone and Rus- sell and Drake, in Powell's Valley, in 1773.
It was the belief of all the men of military experience, especially of those who had fought the Indians, that, if the Shawnees invaded Fincastle County with any considerable force, they would come from their towns in Ohio by way of Big Sandy River and its tributaries.
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This would be the most direct route, and the one where the savages would encounter no resistance until they reached the Clinch Valley. If they did come the Sandy River route, they would travel up Tug River, or the Dry Fork of Tug, or up the Louisa River; and by following either one of these three streams to their source, they would enter the Clinch Valley on territory now embraced in Taze- well County. For this reason the military authorities of Fincastle County were extremely anxious to make the line of defence in Taze- well County as strong as possible. The Tazewell pioneers had the work pretty well done before the conflict with the Indians began.
The white cross shows the location of William Wynne's fort. The beautiful home of Mr. and Mrs. Geo. A. Martin is shown just east of the white cross.
There were three substantial forts already erected on the headwaters of the Clinch. Thomas Witten's fort at the Crab Orchard, Rees Bowen's at Maiden Spring, and William Wynne's at Locust Hill.
Great excitement, and in some instances consternation, prevailed in all the settlements west of New River. Colonel Preston became deeply concerned about John Floyd's surveying party that was then actively at work in Kentucky ; and sent a messenger to Captain Wiliam Russell, urging him to send scouts to warn Floyd and all the surveying parties of the impending danger; and to tell them to come home as quickly as possible.
Captain Russell, who was then at his fort at Castle's Woods, on Sunday, June 26th, wrote Colonel Preston: "I am Sensible good Sir of your Uncommon concern for the Security of Capt. Floyd and the Gentlemen with him, and I sincerely Sympathise with you, lest they should fall a Prey, to such Inhuman, Blood thirsty Devils, as I have so lately suffered by ; but may God of his Infinite Mercy, Shield him, and Company, from the present impending Danger, and could
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we (thro' Providence) be a means of preserving such Valuable Mem- bers, by sending out Scouts, such a procedure would Undoutedly be, of the most lasting, and secret Satisfaction to us; and the Country in general. I have engaged to start on the occasion, two of the best Hands I think of, Danl. Boone, and Michl. Stoner; who have Engaged to search the Country, as low as the falls, and to return by way of Gaspers Lick, on Cumberland, and through Cumberland Gap. So that by the assiduity of these men, if it is not too late, I hope the Gentlemen will be apprised of the eminent Danger they are Daily in."
It is needless to say that the two fearless pioneer patriots, Boone and Stoner, lost no time in starting on their rescue mission. They journeyed into the wilderness regions of Kentucky, with which they were already pretty familiar. At Harrodsburg they came upon Colonel James Harrod and thirty men, who were busily engaged in building a village of cabins. This was in July; and on the 14th of the preceding May, according to a note in Hanson's journal, John Floyd and his surveying party had visited Colonel Harrod and his party at this same place. Boone and Stoner informed Harrod and his party of their danger and they made no delay in starting to the settlments east of the Cumberland Mountains. Then the two scouts started out to find Floyd, and came upon another surveying party at Fontainebleau. After warning them, Boone and Stoner proceeded to the Kentucky River, where they found Floyd, and hc started immediately for the settlements in the Clinch Valley. Arriving at Captain Russell's fort and finding that Russell was pre- paring, with his company, to join the militiary expedition to Point Pleasant, Floyd proceeded to Colonel Preston's home at Smithfield, reaching that place on the 13th of August, 1774. Boone and Stoner proceeded to the falls of the Ohio River, where they found another company of surveyors to whom they gave warning, and then started on the return trip to the Clinch Valley. They arrived safely at Captain Russell's, having traveled eight hundred miles in sixty-one days on foot. There were more than a dozen men, of other survey- ing parties, that the scouts did not find, and they had to be left to their fate. Two of these, Hancock Taylor and James Strother, were killed by the Indians while they were traveling in a canoe. It is presumed that the others escaped, as Captain Russell reported to Colonel Preston that "John Green and three others of Mr. Tay- lor's Company have Arrived at Clinch." Two of these were John Bell and Abraham Hempinstall; the other man's name has not been preserved.
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CHAPTER VIII.
FRONTIERS OF FINCASTLE COUNTY INVADED BY INDIANS.
In the spring of 1774 Captain William Russell went to Williams- burg to acquaint Governor Dunmore with the serious condition of affairs on the borders of Fincastle County; and he returned with instructions from the governor, directed to Colonel Preston and the other officers of the county, to take proper steps for protecting the borders, and to urge the inhabitants not to abandon their homes on the frontiers.
On the 25th of June, 1774, a council of the militia officers of Fincastle County was held at the county seat, the Lead Mines, and at this council it was determined that Lieutenant Colonel Christian should march with several companies of militia to the settlements on Clinch River, and from thence send out ranging parties to discover and attack any parties of Indians that might possibly come up Sandy River to distress the settlers on the Clinch. This action was taken in compliance with orders from Governor Dunmore, who seemed anxious to protect the inhabitants of the Holston and Clinch valleys from incursions by the Cherokees and Shawnees. In pur- suance of this plan of action, Colonel Preston, who was then at Fort Chiswell, in the present Wythe County, on June 27th 1774, sent the following instructions to Colonel William Christian:
"I have given Orders to six Captains to raise twenty men out of each of their Companys either as Volunteers or by Draught; which with what men can be engag'd from other companies, will make up the party One Hundred & fifty men besides Officers.
"You are to take the Command of this party, Captains Crockett & Campbell will go with you & each will have fifty men beside the Necessary Officers, the remaining fifty will be under your Imme- diate Command as a Company, and as One subaltern will be enough I am in hopes Ensign William Buchanan will answer that purpose.
"You will endeavor to procure ammunition and Provisions for this service. I expect a good many of the soldiers will take their Horses to carry the provisions, for which they ought to be made an allowance, this allowance & the value of the provisions or what ever else may be necessary for this Service you will please to have Set- tled by two honest men on Oath.
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"I have appointed the Soldiers to meet you at the Town House on Holston early next week, from whence you are to begin your march to Clinch & from thence over Cumberland Mountain by any Gap or pass you think proper that Leades to the head branches of the Kentucky & therc Range together or in separate parties & at such places as you judge most likely to discover and repulse the Enemy on their Approach to our Settlements. It is believed there is a large party of Cherokees on their way to or from the Shawnees Towns, if you should fall in with this Company & know them I must leave it to your own Prudence in what manner to treat them, tho it is generally Said that these Indians are about to Join our Enemies, yet as this Report is not reduced to a Certainty, I cannot give any Particular orders herein. You will Probably be able to Judge by the Manner of their approach or rather Circumstances that cannot now be foreseen, what Indians they are & then you will act Accord- ingly, but upon the whole I would earnestly Recommend the utmost caution and Discretion in this very nice & important part of your duty. Should this party of Cherokees, which is generally said to be about Seventy in number, come in a Hostile manner there is no doubt but they will be Accompanyd by a number of Shawnees or rather Enemy Indians which may render them formidable to your party.
"I would therefore Recommend your keeping out some active men on the right & left, in the front & Rear even to the distance of a mile on Your march and at Camp to keep out a number of Centinals, to prevent a Surprize which is too often attended with fatal Consequences, this above all things ought ever to be Guarded against, nor Should this Part of the duty be Neglected or Relaxed on any occasion whatsoever."
Colonel Preston then recommended that Colonel Christian should consult his officers in connection with important matters connected with the expedition; and expressed the hope that the officers, who were required and commanded to obey their commanding officer, would be alert and obedient in the performance of duty. He also directed that the officers should keep good order and discipline in their companies, and "be unanimous and Friendly amongst them- selves that every Intention of Sending out the Party may be fully answered." Colonel Preston closed these orders with the following stirring appeal to the patriotism and military spirit of the officers and men of the expedition:
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"As it is expected that you will have none but choice officers & men on this little Expedition: therefore the Eyes of the Country will be upon you: So that I have no doubt but every person in his station will exert himself to answer the wishes & expectations of his Country, and serve it as much as in his power lies.
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